


Some Sunny Day

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock – just out of university – takes on the mystery of a phantom ship in the Bermuda Triangle, where a time warp gives him his first introduction to a man he's not destined to meet for years to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Sunny Day

**Author's Note:**

> Fans of _The X-Files_ won't need to be told that this story, while not a crossover, is based heavily on the episode _Triangle_ , written by Chris Carter. The author's knowledge of WWII-era nautical procedures and terminology is sadly lacking – apologies to anyone who knows better.

Sherlock had traded one tedium for another. He felt cheated.

His final year at university had been an endless, intolerable slog of crossing T's and dotting I's and frittering away hours, _hours_ , in complying with idiotic departmental formatting rules. He would never have stuck it out – would happily have left without the formality of a degree, secure in his own private knowledge that his dissertation was a triumph – if Mycroft hadn't bullied him into it, if Victor hadn't goaded him forward in that way that only he could goad. But now Sherlock had his slip of paper, and what had it gained him? Mycroft's admonitions that he should _do something worthwhile_ with his talents, which meant, he supposed, sitting in an office and acting like some kind of sentient fibre optic network; Victor's incredible suggestion that he come vacation with him on some yacht in the Aegean, as though anything could be worse than being cooped up with someone who insisted on putting his arm around one's shoulders at every opportunity. No, before he'd become another Mycroft or subject himself to Victor's ogling on a floating prison cell, he'd – well, he'd spend hours picking weed out of a boat's motor in the stifling, sunny calms of the Sargasso Sea.

Which was what he was doing now. But at least he was alone, and at least there was the prospect of something mildly exciting happening. He didn't for an instant believe the accounts, all _magical_ mumbo-jumbo collected from baffled fishermen or overenthusiastic hunters of the paranormal, of a massive luxury liner mysteriously appearing and disappearing over and over, but he had a theory involving the refraction of sunlight, the curvature of the earth, and perhaps a recent heat wave he felt would answer nicely. Those factors combined with the ship's strange and notorious disappearance in 1939 (the more paranoid conspiracy theorists liked to insist the _Queen Anne_ had been intentionally sacrificed by her government during a top-secret wartime experiment) would be more than enough to explain any peculiar visions on the part of sailors, already a notoriously imaginative and superstitious breed.

And then, he expected it rather got Mycroft's goat to think of him floating about wasting his time on ghost stories, so there was that. It was while he was imagining his brother's gratifying fury that he saw the edge of a shadow sweeping up the length of his boat – and then, nothing.

Nothing but darkness and cold rain and a rough pull around his middle, hands pulling at his sodden clothes and tugging him over a railing onto a – what? Pier? Deck? Not his boat; if it was a ship it was large, huge, hardly moving at all even in winds approaching what felt like fifty knots. He hacked up more water than he cared to think about, spraying a pair of shoes that weren't his, causing a man he couldn't see behind the wet mess of his hair to leap back. There were three of them around him, hauling him up, slapping him on the back. "All right then, stupid?" one of them called out, shouting into his ear as though he was half deaf, not half drowned.

"I'm –" Sherlock's voice caught on another burning wave of salt water before he could object to that characterisation, and he settled for lifting his head to glare through the sheeting rain at the offending party – but his attention was immediately arrested by the man's uniform. Nothing special, nothing impressive in and of itself, but the wool was all wrong, an old-fashioned weave that no low-level deckhand (as the man's mannerisms and particular grip obviously made him out for) would ever wear in service. There were far cheaper methods of manufacture, had been for decades, that didn't make sense. He wrestled his arm free of one of his rescuers, shoved his hair back away from his face, and threw his head up to stare at the looming, immaculate funnels, 1930's construction but clearly _new_ , a very distinctive and defunct shade of Tuscan beige –

He sighed. "Oh, no."

"Not _so_ stupid," someone laughed, kneading at his shoulder in a failed and rather painful attempt at camaraderie. "We know we're in trouble, don't we?"

"Where's my boat?" he managed to choke out, dreading more than anything having to admit to the annoyingly salty character who'd hired him that, yes, there did appear to be such a thing as a Devil's Triangle.

"You don't have a boat no more, mate. Jesus, you'd think a man would be happy just to be alive –"

"Enough of this." A rougher voice, another jerk on his arm. "You know what the captain said. Any irregularities."

And so off they went, Sherlock craning his neck as he was stuffed down a narrow corridor to try to catch some glimpse of the wreckage of his boat, but seeing only dark waves and a black sky.

He waited, dripping and shaking, with his escort in a small but very well-appointed map room. The massive radio, the make of the charts, even the varnish on the wooden shelves all tended to confirm his hypothesis that either he'd wound up in 1939 or some modern Marie Antoinette had managed to outfit a perfect working replica of a lost ocean liner, complete with colourful crew, for her own personal pleasure.

When the captain walked in, however, both theories sagged under a new weight. _So to speak_. "Mycroft?" He barked a laugh, although it was mostly to cover up his surprise – he couldn't possibly give his brother the satisfaction. "God, you look ridiculous." The hat truly didn't suit him.

Mycroft – or the captain, or both – only stared at him, flat, unperturbed, assessing. Sherlock felt himself prickle competitively under that shrewd attention. _Oh, this should be interesting_. Because as surely as he could see that Mycroft's get-up, his hair, even the evidence left behind by his razor placed him firmly in the first half of the twentieth century, he knew his brother (was he his brother? oh, to be able to disown the bastard) would recognise his T-shirt and lightweight jacket as something very modern indeed.

"Where did you find him?" Mycroft asked after a few silent seconds, turning his eyes back to his men.

"Half dead in what's left of his boat – unmarked."

"And who is he?"

"You know my name," Sherlock snapped, not entirely convinced it was true, but irritated at being ignored. 

But when Mycroft looked at him again, it was without any sign of recognition – only cold, detached suspicion. It was unsettling, to say the least. Sherlock had never quite appreciated what an advantage his fraught relationship with his brother had given him. "I'm afraid not," Mycroft drawled. "How did you come to require our assistance, Mr …?"

"Holmes."

Mycroft's eyebrow didn't even twitch. _Well._

Sherlock cleared his throat and continued, bearing himself up defiantly, determined to provoke a reaction. "I was out in search of the _Queen Anne_ , as a matter of fact. I'd been told she was on a very intriguing mission." There it was – a slight darkening in Mycroft's eyes, a new tightness to his mouth. _Hah._ "I must say, I didn't believe a word of it – reports of secret government experiments foisted upon unwitting citizens are usually so overblown – but now that I know who's at the helm, as it were, I'm frankly inclined to think it's all perfectly true. If ever there was a man who would sacrifice the lives of –"

He didn't get to finish, as he ought to have foreseen; the blow to the back of his head dropped him into darkness, but not before he caught the look of affronted shock on Mycroft's face. So it was more or less worth it.

When he woke, he found himself in the closest approximation to a brig a luxury liner could offer – a small, interior cabin relieved of most of its fixtures and left with only two single beds stripped to the mattress. He sat up, wincing at the throb of pain biting into his skull just above his ear. His cellmate, curled up on his side and sleeping facing the opposite wall, was dressed in ratty, too-small clothes and had an incongruously neat haircut, which –

"Hello."

Sherlock jolted and snapped his head toward the door, hissing through his teeth at the sudden wrench in his neck. The pain and the dim light had put him severely off, it seemed; he'd missed the man standing against the door. A quick once-over had his guard up, though: this third man was wearing a crew member's uniform, yes, but he was swimming in it, and had the clammy, unhealthy sheen of one who had recently spent quite a lot of time being seasick. Sherlock would have wagered everything he had that his two companions had swapped clothes sometime within the past couple of hours. _Curious_. He suspected a closer inspection would reveal the sleeping man to be unconscious. 

"How long was I out?" Sherlock asked, dispensing with any pleasantries. Whatever was going on here, he needed to get a handle on it before revealing what he knew.

"Not long." The man advanced further into the room, his hands thrust into his pockets – to hide what, Sherlock wondered? – and the low, yellow light from the lamp revealed a soft, not unpleasant face, sickly but clean-shaven, a full but nervous mouth, and large, dark, tired eyes. "The captain said he'd want to see you when you came to." 

There was something searching, coaxing about the man's voice that made Sherlock sit up and pay attention – and play dumb. "Did he? What about?" 

"Oh, if you don't know, I certainly don't." A nervous laugh, and the man looked him over, quick and shy but _sharp_ , an intensity to his gaze that reminded Sherlock of Mycroft, or maybe of Victor, or perhaps his own gaze in the mirror. "He doesn't take an interest in many people. I thought you must be a stowaway. Aren't you?"

Sherlock got to his feet very slowly, exaggerating his difficulties, and wasn't terribly surprised when the man stepped up to take his arm. Whoever he was, he was keen on inspecting. On getting close. On knowing what Mycroft found so very interesting. "I'm not," Sherlock replied, careful to keep his eyes on the man's face rather than let them flicker down to the ligature marks he knew he'd find around his wrists. "Just unlucky. They found me drifting out in the storm, and I thought they'd taken me aboard to help me, but – here I am. You're my jailer, aren't you? Some rescue."

"You have a ship?" he asked, his eagerness insufficiently disguised. Sherlock pounced on it.

"Yes – yes, they're towing it, as I understand. And I'd very much like to get back to it," he continued, deciding suddenly to make a gamble, to interpret the man's keen eyes, his willingness to touch and the very slight flush to his otherwise colourless face as a much more base sort of interest. Sherlock turned his face, almost brushing cheeks with the man beside him. "If you could see your way to helping me, I'd be – very grateful." God knew it had worked with Victor. _Just one more hit, you know I'll make it worth your while._

For a moment, he thought he'd struck gold. The man wet his lips, his face the flat, controlled blank of someone trying not to betray himself. "Yeah? Is that what the captain wants you for?"

Suppressing the sudden urge to leap into the ocean and drown himself, Sherlock pressed on, letting his hand fall to his side to curl his fingers around the man's forearm. "Maybe. In any case, if you help me," he purred, pulling the man's hand from his pocket and bringing it up to his face before shoving the sagging sleeve down to the man's elbow and revealing the red chafing around his narrow wrist, "I won't tell him you've escaped, knocked his guard out cold, and stolen his uniform."

The man didn't pull away, or stiffen, or curse or swing at him; he only laughed. His smile was wide and easy and suddenly much more energetic. "That's good – that's very good. I didn't have the time to clean up properly, of course." His voice had taken on a pronounced Dublin drawl. "If you'd slept a little longer –"

"I could have slept forever. You'll never fill out that jacket."

The man sniffed. "We work with what we have. Do you really have a ship?"

"No. But I want very much to get off this one, and I suggest you do the same. It's going to be lost at sea – well, not lost precisely, but –"

"But destroyed in a military technology testing exercise?"

It was Sherlock's turn to huff a little. "Well – yes. Are you the author? I suppose they _would_ want you to go down with the ship."

"Oh, no. No, not the author – the instigation." His smile took on a wicked curl. "It's an experiment, yes, that much is correct – but don't you think for a minute that's the main purpose behind our doomed voyage. That's just a convenient add-on, a bonus. No, all of this - _all_ of this – is just to get rid of one man. One troublesome man, one person who's finally got in the captain's way one too many times and has to be disposed of." 

Sherlock sighed, irritated to feel a twinge of conscience. The captain, being Mycroft, would be more than a captain. Who would he go to such trouble to rid himself of? "And I don't suppose this one troublesome man happens to be – I don't know, a war criminal? A Nazi collaborator? A scientist ready to hand the bomb over to the Germans, that sort of thing?"

Another laugh, childish, almost catching in its glee. "Nothing that dramatic, I'm afraid. Just a nuisance." He shook his hand free of Sherlock's grip and stuck it out to him. "You can call me Richard."

"Well, Richard," Sherlock said, shaking his hand with a little thrill of genuine pleasure that he did his best to hide. "If a troublesome man wanted to escape the captain's sphere of influence, I could give him the coordinates he needed to get the job done. Of course, he'd have to take over the ship first –"

"Oh, naturally."

"But if he were able to do _that_ , he might find himself in a very interesting place, indeed."

"And where might that be?"

Sherlock waved his hand toward the ceiling, a silly little flourish. "The future."

It didn't surprise him when Richard only laughed and clapped his hands together, nothing in his face but delight. "What fun. Well, then, Mr …"

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Well then, Mr Sherlock Holmes." He pulled out a pair of handcuffs, no doubt the ones that had so recently restrained him, and let them hang from his fingertips. "If you'll put these on I think we can probably fake our way down to the boiler room, where my friends are waiting. No time to waste."

Sherlock put his hands behind his back and let Richard slip the cuffs on, but jerked one wrist out before they could click shut entirely. "Sorry, Richard," he said, glancing back over his shoulder with a smirk, "but we've only just met." And although he was beyond pleased to have the opportunity to stick it to Mycroft and make the acquaintance of someone so refreshingly _interesting_ , he'd have had to have been born yesterday to trust a man his brother was willing to kill thousands to destroy.

"Quite right," Richard replied, with a decidedly predatory wink. 

The march down to the boiler room was long and circuitous, and Sherlock had the feeling Richard knew quite a bit more about the ship's operations than any prisoner or passenger ought to. They arrived without incident, and it was clear from their very warm reception down below that Richard was a welcome sight. Sherlock wondered how many of these men knew the impending fate of the ship, how many of them Richard had won over by promising to thwart it. Perhaps, he thought, his own arrival had provided an alternative to bloodshed.

"Our friend here," Richard was saying to the men who'd gathered around as he pocketed the handcuffs once again, "has brought us an easy means to get out of this little mess. If you'll just give them the coordinates, Mr Holmes, I think we'll find we can be on our way very soon."

"Coordinates?" One of the men was eying him suspiciously. "What the hell will those do?"

"You already know what they do," Sherlock said, turning to Richard with a quiet smile. He must have already known – he'd never have believed him, otherwise. 

Richard smiled back, a strange, distant nostalgia rising into the darkness of his eyes. "I've had the pleasure of stumbling across them once before, yes," he said. "I didn't have the opportunity to record them, and I'm afraid my memory of the …" He trailed off, a slight crease appearing between his eyebrows before he broke out into a cheery grin again, pushing something aside, Sherlock thought, that had just barely risen to the surface. "Yes. I know what they do. Now – off we go."

Sherlock cleared his throat. "First – I want a boat."

Richard's eyebrows rose, and Sherlock flattered himself he saw just a touch of disappointment in the way his shoulders fell. "A boat? You won't be joining us?"

"I'll be following on my own, thank you." As lovely as Richard was, Sherlock thought he might rather take his chances with the sharks than with a ship full of people willing to take Richard's orders. Had they been on equal footing, perhaps, things might have been different – things might have been downright magical. "After all – we've only just met."

"Hm." Richard smiled, craning his neck to the side briefly as though working out a crick. "Quite right. Well," he sighed, clapping Sherlock on the shoulder. "In case we never meet again."

And Richard kissed him, his fingers curling like claws into Sherlock's jacket. His mouth was warm and firm and tasted something like mint and salt and whiskey, and despite himself Sherlock shut his eyes for a moment, just for a moment, and let himself run his tongue slowly across Richard's lower lip, an almost rueful gesture, because as much as he'd have liked to think he'd meet the man again, he very much doubted he would.

Then Sherlock broke away with a quick tilt of his head, stepped back, and gave him a playful little salute. "Goodbye, Richard. Say hello to the captain for me."

"I'll remember."

And that, like it or not, was that – there was no sense in drawing it out any longer. One of Richard's men helped him make the journey to the boat deck, and when he found himself safely ensconced in one of the ship's boats and lowered into the water, he shouted the coordinates back up to his shepherd, pulled his compass out of his jacket pocket, and waited for the massive outline of the _Queen Anne_ to leave him well in its wake before setting out for the edge of the triangle and hoping to find himself nearer to home than he was now. 

It was in the moments before he was swamped by a massive wall of dark water that he decided perhaps he'd have been better off with Richard, after all.

But he woke safe and sound, if bruised and burned, tucked into a neat bed in a large, familiar room. His wallet and his compass sat on the bedside table, and the newspaper Mycroft's man had left on the tray at the other side of the bed put him firmly back in July, 1998. He floated for a few minutes, listing between disorientation and flashes of rapidly disintegrating memories, trying to grasp the images and logic of his journey before they slipped away from him like a fading dream – but in the end he lost the battle, left with nothing but a grey void. He'd have believed, then, that he'd never gone to sea at all, if he hadn't been so very dehydrated and red. He'd have believed it had been nothing but a spectacular nightmare, had he not caught the faint but undeniable taste of whiskey, mint, and salt as he gulped down half a glass of water, quenching his parched throat.


End file.
